Today I have a special treat for you. I got to interview Abigail Harris and M. L. Milligan about their anthology series “Seize the World.” And share a little about a new project!

Rebekah
Hello ladies! Welcome to my blog! Thanks for joining me today. Can you tell my readers just a little about yourselves?

Mac
Hi! I’m M. L. Milligan, but my friends call me Mac. I’m a writer with way too many WIPs and a dreamer with many visions. I love horses, reading, rainstorms, and starry nights.

Abigail
Hello, Rebekah! Thank you so much for having us! I am so excited to join you. I’m a Bible-believing, Christ-honoring entrepreneur, the oldest of either with the best homeschooling Momma who dabbles in real estate and notary, and a Veteran dad. I’m the author of a handful of indie or hybrid-published books and live in Oklahoma with my family and our crazy zoo of animals. (Mr. Henry Houdini, our moody flock of chickens and the sweetest duckies, our Great Pyrenees Bear and Bailey, and the craziest brother and sister kittens.) I also own Beyond the Bookery; two dreams come together in a small press and boutique with the finest chief editor (and good friend!) M. L. Milligan!

Rebekah
What made you two want to put together a series of anthologies? What it a plan from the start to do a series? Or did that just sort of happen?

Mac
Hehe, that’s a story in itself (which I will leave to Abigail to explain in its entirety as she’s truly the mastermind behind it). As for the series part, yes, we did plan for Seize the World to be multiple books!

Abigail
I… Well, thanks for that, Mac. I had always wanted to start a small press or a small publishing house, then I’d submitted to a few anthologies. I had had the thought that maybe one day I would do one myself. However, one day Mac and I were talking about doing an anthology as a “maybe one day” idea and the next thing we knew we had the full plans for the first anthology while talking about the rest of the series. It was quite sudden, a lot of fun, and one of my favorite things to have done in my writing career so far. It’s been a blast working on it with Mac.

Rebekah
That’s fun. Don’t you just love it when talk turns into action and the next thing you know, it’s happening?

Mac
Definitely! It’s been a blast. Especially since we discovered that we really think a lot alike. Our brains work well together.

Rebekah
That’s even better! Fun to bounce ideas off each other.

Abigail
Yes! It is incredible what one little thing can lead to. Haha, yes! We are quite a lot alike and it’s been so much fun to see just how alike we think and often have the same idea at the same time.

Rebekah
So, tell me about the series titles. What made you go with “Seize the–” Was this going to be a series for each holiday or what?

Abigail
From the start we knew we wanted to do something to reflect our faith. We wanted the stories to honor God which led to “Seize the-” and we did set them around holidays, however we didn’t want them to only be about holidays since so many people have different views on holidays so they aren’t officially holiday reads. Though they are tied into holidays at times. 

Mac
Yes, exactly. And I feel like us making it more an overarching theme and set in seasons instead of on holidays gives participating writers more creative room for their stories, too.

Abigail
Yes! Exactly, and it has been interesting to see how some people have a similar idea while we end up with each story being uniquely itself.

Rebekah
I like that. Has it been hard deciding which stories to include? Have you had to reject some because they just didn’t fit as well or you didn’t feel they were as well written? Do you have a set number of stories you accept for each collection?

Mac
Unfortunately, we cannot accept everybody, whether that be due to content and ideas we feel don’t agree with our personal beliefs, or that of the theme of the anthology. We do have a set number of short stories we can take, which makes it sad when we have to select only a few—we get so many good stories!

Abigail
Oh, my, yes! It has been a struggle to choose the stories as they each have strong suits and downsides. We would go over them individually, make a list, and compare our lists and reasons for liking the stories we did and our reasons for not preferring a certain story. We took into account the use of prompts, content, writing style and how well the stories were written, and how well the story for the theme. We did set a limit on the number of stories from the start to make sure each anthology was a similar length.

Rebekah
That all makes sense. I’m sure it would be hard to pick just a certain number of stories!

Mac
Extremely so.

Rebekah
So, you’ve published 3 collections so far? And you have another one coming out? How many books do you plan to do for this series? Or are you still deciding that?

Abigail
Yes! We have 3, anthologies out now. Seize the Moment will be the 4th and final anthology for Seize the World series. But we are looking forward to publishing another series of anthologies in 2024! The next series is going to be incredible, (at least, I hope so!) And is expected to have 5 anthologies.

Rebekah
Oh! Sounds exciting! Any hints about the coming series? Or do we just have to wait?

Mac
Hehe, Abigail? Want to share?

Abigail
Oooh, ma’am, yes ma’am, Mac! It is my current favorite subject after all, so this will be fun! The next series will be a little different than the previous anthologies. We are doing the submissions differently as well as the length of the stories which will be longer with 8,000-10,000 words long. We will choose the stories we find fit the anthology until we have a collection of stories at around 100,000 words long. This leaves the number of stories chosen to depend on the length of each story. Now, about the themes or subject! The series is called “A Warrior’s Heart” and the anthologies are titled, “An Armed Heart”, “A Heart’s Memories”, “An Independent Heart”, “A Heart’s Hurt”, and “An Overwhelmed Heart”! The warrior and heart parts of the names comes from our sharing stories with warriors for Christ and their hearts. My stories will be WWII and focus on two families during the time before, during, and after the Second World War. So far, I know my stories will have a battle and home front setting with themes of the story Ruth. It’s actually an old story idea that I am so looking forward to finally finishing!

I’m not sure if Mac has decided which stories she will include, but I’ve heard some of her ideas and, man, oh, man! They sound so wonderful!

Mac
I, for one, cannot WAIT to read Abigail’s stories. Aww, thanks girl! Haha, we’ll see if they turn out as wonderful on paper as they do in my head.

Rebekah
Oooh, that sounds like a very fun and unique way to choose submissions to this collection!

Now am I getting this straight? Abigail, your stories will be a continuation throughout the whole collection? Like a series?

Abigail
Aww, thanks, Mac! We hope it will be as much fun as it sounds like it will be. Yes! My stories will be a continuation throughout each of the anthologies much like my stories in the Seize the World anthologies are.

Rebekah
That’s neat, Abigail!
And Mac, do you want to share anything about your plans?

Mac
I wish I could, but at this point, I really don’t have anything solid to share. Y’all will just have to live in suspense till book #1 comes out!

Rebekah
Hehe! I totally get that!

Abigail
Somehow, I should have expected that answer, Mac. Either way, the stories are sure to be thrilling reads!

Mac
Well thank you.

Rebekah
Thank you both so much for sharing! I’m looking forward to seeing your next adventure. Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Abigail
It was my pleasure! I can’t think of anything else. Thank you so much for inviting us to share about our stories!

Mac
Yes, thank you so much for having us!

You can connect with Mac or Abigail in any of the places below. I’m sure they’d be happy to have you stop by.

Have you read any of the Seize the World collections? Did you perhaps summit a story to one of them? Let me know! Are you excited for the new collection Abigail and Mac announced?